Bigfoot Networks planning $99 Killer NIC

The Tech Report had an interview with Michael Howse, the CEO of Bigfoot Networks. It's been over a year since we've heard something from this company so the interviewer wondered what Bigfoot is up to now.

Howse says his firm is mainly focusing its efforts on winning over major gaming PC vendors like Dell, Falcon Northwest, CyberPower, and Commodore. He claims the Killer NIC network cards have found their way into 10-40 percent of the gaming rigs from those firms. The firm also wants to reach more enthusiasts who built their own systems, and plans to release a second-gen Killer NIC card in Q2 2009 that will cost around $99.

Reaching out to a greater audience will naturally involve price cuts, since not many gamers are willing to shell out over $150 for a network card. When we inquired about pricing, Howse recalled his days at 3dfx, where a large portion of sales came from the $129 Voodoo 3 2000. Increased volume (and resulting economies of scale) eventually pushed that card to $99. The CEO revealed that a second-gen Killer NIC will come next quarter, and while he wouldn't explicitly announce pricing, he suggested that Bigfoot is aiming for a similar ballpark. Both increased volume and a switch from field-programmable gate arrays to custom-made chips will allow Bigfoot to cut costs.